Epilogue
by The Mab Queen
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley have a chat at the Ritz after Armagedidn't, music plays, and they finally get to settle things without the fear of anyone breathing down their necks.


Hell's whiskey tasted like piss and Heaven's wine couldn't get a mouse drunk, so Aziraphale and Crowley might have drunk a little too much at the Ritz. And why sober up? They were alive. Crowley had seen Heaven again, and Aziraphale had walked in and out of Hell. The world was saved, Armageddon averted, certain death escaped.

"Could you have imagined," Aziraphale said after the third bottle, "us here, now, when we met in the Garden?"

"Maybe, if you'd handed me Nutter's book." Crowley's face never got red—probably a side effect of the body housing a demonic snake-based entity—but his hand was beginning to wobble as he brought his glass to his lips. "I knew you were different soon as you told me about that sword."

"I still don't know if I did the right thing giving that away…" Aziraphale said, frowning as he remembered War wielding the blade, and then a bunch of school children stabbing divine beings to death with it.

"That's the thing though, right? You did something you knew the Almighty wouldn't like 'cause you knew it wasn't right to just chuck those two out with only the leaves on their crotches." Crowley slammed his glass down forcefully to punctuate his point. The force should have broken the glass, but it was too afraid of demonic retaliation if it did. "Knew you were different."

"Well. I didn't _know_ She wouldn't like it." Aziraphale didn't really have the sobriety to argue the point, however. "But you, you were different too. Sitting there, wondering at the unfairness of it all instead of gloating."

"I didn't mean to get them tossed on their arses in a lion-infested desert! Just wanted to piss off you lot is all." Crowley tapped his glass and it immediately refilled. Probably a careless thing to do in the middle of a crowded restaurant, but it didn't stop him from drinking. "How should I know that the Almighty is touchy about fruit?"

"Well, the Almighty was touchy about quite a lot of things back then." Aziraphale finished off his glass, and he was careless enough to refill it with a tap too. "You think… maybe that was the point? You think they were supposed to eat it?"

"Wouldn't surprise me. Bloody ineffable." Crowley waved his glass, almost spilling wine on his sleeve. "Sounds just like God to put a 'do not touch' sign up so She could jerk someone around when they did touch."

"Yes, but—look at what the humans have made, Crowley." Aziraphale waved haphazardly at the Ritz, at the piles of empty plates and food and wine in front of them, at all the people cheerfully talking at their tables and the hum of love and merriment that rumbled through them. "Isn't it wonderful? She would've known this would happen. Maybe Eve and Adam's indiscretion was proof they were ready to make this world."

"Ew." Crowley wrinkled his nose. "No, because that would mean that me tempting them was all part of Her plan and I actually did what She wanted me to."

"Crowley. My dear. You don't report to Hell anymore." Aziraphale leaned in to whisper, and as he always did, Crowley leaned in to meet him in the middle. "You can admit to doing good things sometimes."

Crowley let out a huff of air that was basically a laugh. "Don't feel like it, though."

"I think stopping Armageddon is a pretty good deed."

"Ah! But I did it because I was selfish. Wanted things to stay like they are." Crowley tapped his noise like somehow that made the statement weigh more. "Evil deed."

"Hmmm, yes. And saving the dolphins had nothing to do with it?"

Crowley scowled at Aziraphale. Aziraphale smiled back.

"Oh, piss off." But there was no heat in Crowley's voice as he hid his mouth with another long drink. Aziraphale laughed, signaling for another bottle of wine.

Three more bottles in, Aziraphale and Crowley stumbled out of the Ritz arm-in-arm. Aziraphale's face was pale and pink and Crowley's eyes were hidden as always by infernal sunglasses, but the alcohol showed in their steps, in the awkward way they pushed and pulled each other swaying on the sidewalk.

"Why must you wear the sunglasses at _night?_" Aziraphale said, his words not quite as crisp as usual. "Is it your eyes? You know you can just keep mortals from noticing your eyes without them, don't you?"

"I dunno." Crowley's voice rolled the same way it always did, slurring with his accent smoothing out a lazy air, but there was a quirk at the corner of his mouth that spoke to a smile. "Why do you have to wear bowties?"

"They're _stylish._" Aziraphale adjusted his bowtie with one hand, his grin a little too silly, a little too loose.

"So's the sunglasses."

"You've been wearing them since Rome! Don't you think they go out of style eventually?"

Crowley flashed Aziraphale a grin that showed his teeth. "_Never._"

As they stumbled down the street, music spilled out of the clubs just beginning to rev up for the night. Meatloaf bellowed out of a club painted in rainbows called _The Old Queen._ Bright lights flashed almost to the beat. _Whatever happened to Saturday night? When you dressed up sharp and you felt alright… _

Crowley paused outside the club. Alternating blue and red and purple lights washed over the pair. Humans chatted as a line outside of the club formed.

"Hey, angel, you ever dance?"

Aziraphale scrunched his nose in that way he always did when Crowley abruptly changed the subject, but the smile was still in his eyes. "Well, if you _must_ know, I'm rather skilled at the gavotte."

"No, no," Crowley waved it off before grabbing Aziraphale's hands. "We're not doing the gavotte."

"Oh!" Aziraphale's eyebrows shot up as he was suddenly pulled close. "Not the gavotte?"

"Nope." Their feet tangled together, but the beat was fast and who cared if they were drunk and clumsy?

"But we're dancing." Despite the reticence in Aziraphale's voice, his feet followed Crowley's.

"Yup." Crowley put a little extra emphasis on the P. His fingers curled around Aziraphale's.

"Well." The smile made its way back to Aziraphale's face. "That seems fun, then."

Somehow, the music got louder, loud enough to rock the street to the beat of Meatloaf. Crowley and Aziraphale danced erratic circles around each other, linked only by their hands. Fingers intertwined. Magic, some a little bright and some a little dark but all the same, hummed in that one connection. The music rattled up into their joints, looser, looser until Crowley was pulling Aziraphale close and their bodies touched just briefly before Aziraphale was pulling away again, still holding Crowley's hand with eyes sparkling. Crowley's smirk had humor and intent as he pulled him back, their circles undulating, drawing crooked curves across the ground. The music shifted, almost like Meatloaf was right there and fifty years younger, jumping from parked car to parked car and singing his heart out on a microphone.

The people queued up at the door, clumps of young people with colored hair and ratty shirts, bobbed to the rhythm. Then their hips wiggled. Then they danced, pulling each other away from the building, filling the sidewalk, flooding the street. Despondent hearts dragged out by friends suddenly lit up with music. Pining crushes somehow found each other on the floor even if one of them had been at home moments before, brushing their teeth. An old man stuck his head out his window to yell at the club to keep it down, but then he found himself dragging his wife of seventy years into the street. Neither of them had been able to walk without a cane for years, and yet they swung together like a pair of teenagers. The humans were much better dancers than either the angel or the demon, but no one cared.

If anyone asked the partygoers that night, they'd deny it, but in the center of all the frenetic dancing were two middle-aged men who, in the dark, seemed to have the outline of wings behind them. Black and white feathers flying in the air, their eyes only for each other, their smiles only for each other.

As the chorus started rattling to its final end, Crowley pulled Aziraphale back into his arms, chest to chest, and didn't let him pull away again. Aziraphale tilted his head up, a question on his lips, when Crowley pulled him into a kiss.

Aziraphale had never kissed anyone before, especially not at the center of a magical vortex of dancing Brits. The first thing he noticed was that lips are soft. It was quite different from all the other parts of Crowley's body, which was nothing but hard lines and sharp corners. Crowley's kiss tasted like wine and wildfire smoke, so different from the smell of sulfur that always lingered on his clothes.

Crowley, on the other hand, had kissed lots of people before. He was a demon and it came with the territory. Tempt a nun with a kiss here, break the will of a married man with a kiss there… but this was the first time it meant anything. And the first thing he noticed was that Aziraphale wasn't pulling away.

They could have kissed for an eternity. They didn't need to eat or sleep or breathe. But they didn't, and instead, Aziraphale parted their lips first, eyes lingering on Crowley's face.

"You always moved too fast for me," Aziraphale murmured.

Crowley's mouth twisted in that way it always did when he was hurt by something Aziraphale said and he didn't want to show it. "Should I slow down?"

Six thousand years would have probably been plenty slow for most people, but it was different for beings like them. Time moved quickly when you had helped hang stars in the sky. Aziraphale slid into their friendship like it was a bath slightly too hot, slowly and carefully, settling in until he realized it was so comfortable that he couldn't bear to leave it, even if he was too afraid of burning to warm the water any further. Crowley hadn't minded waiting, picking away at his angel bit by bit, tempting him into more and more over thousands of years.

But now their main obstacle was gone, and Crowley desired.

Aziraphale's eyes were always open books. Indecision was there, lingering long and hard. "I don't suppose it's possible to make Hell want to destroy you any more than it already does."

An almost smile quirked the corner of Crowley's lips. _His_ safety had always been Aziraphale's main objection when arguing against their Arrangement. Even in hundreds of years, that hadn't changed. "And it's not possible to get you in worse standing with Heaven."

Crowley dipped his head to kiss him again. Aziraphale jerked his face away. "Glasses."

"What?" Crowley scowled, completely ignoring the new song starting around them as more and more humans danced along.

"I shan't kiss you if I can't see your eyes!" Aziraphale raised his chin in challenge and pursed his lips. "That's that."

"Well, why didn't you just say so?" Crowley didn't hesitate before tearing off his sunglasses, hooking them haphazardly on the collar of his shirt.

Aziraphale had barely enough time to take in Crowley's eyes before the demon pulled him into another kiss, this one rougher, more confident. It was enough time to see them nonetheless. Crowley's eyes always made him easy to read—that's why, Aziraphale suspected, he always hid them. Right now, even with all the serpentine menace built into them, they were full of warmth. Love, even. Aziraphale could taste it in the kiss, overcoming the smoke and wine. He'd known for a long time, of course. He could sense love, and he had sensed Crowley's, gradually growing since they met in the Garden and becoming deeper and more romantic as millennia passed. And Aziraphale, of course, had loved him about as long, though he had the excuse of being obliged to love all God's creations.

He thought that he and Crowley had been in love for maybe hundreds of years. It had taken a German bomb for Aziraphale to realize how head over heels he was. Crowley, though Aziraphale didn't know yet, had realized the power of his own love when Aziraphale's rejection over the holy water, the minimization of their friendship, stung so much. It was a thing they just knew and left unspoken, like so many other things. Feelings that couldn't be acted on while they were on opposite sides, forever frightened of what could happen to the other. But now there were no sides. Now, there was only _their_ side.

All around them, humans danced. New loves and lusts bloomed to the tune of old rock music. Anyone who would deny seeing the shadows of white and black wings would also deny seeing the shadows wrap together, cocooning two snogging middle-aged men inside, both glowing with some internal light separate from the flashes of blue and red and purple.

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A/N: It's good to write romance again. I hope you enjoyed, and reviews are appreciated!


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